Electric Vehicles Grapple With Cold Weather, Fail Miserably
A recent post by Canada’s The Globe and Mail discusses the difficulties electric vehicle (EVs) drivers have experienced in extremely cold weather
The Globe and Mail’s story is a cautionary tale for people who live in some of the northmost regions of the world and regularly experience extreme cold.
EVs, because they rely on batteries, struggle in the cold, with large declines in range and towing capabilities, which are often needed in the northern expanses.
In the article, “In northern Norway’s bitter cold, the durability of electric vehicles is put to the test,” Norwegian journalist Nathan Vanderklippe reports on recent cold-weather tests of EVs in the Lapland Proving Ground. After a night of -40°C, three of five cars wouldn’t start.
While not exactly an anti-EV article, it does describe some of the dangers people in the far north face with vehicles that are less reliable in the cold.
Vanderklippe interviewed an ambulance driver from Hesseng, whose “coverage area extends to Bugøynes, a drive of nearly 100 kilometers.” The ambulance driver reports that he does not trust current EVs to get the job done.
Vanderklippe writes that many people in northern Norway, especially those who live in remote homesteads, tow snowmobiles with them in case they are needed, “and towing can cut an electric vehicle’s range in half, especially in a region where distances are immense.”
Some EV models are reportedly better in the cold than others, but all suffer from decreased range and longer charging times.
Tesla, marketed as a cold-weather friendly model in South Korea, was recently fined by the government for exaggerating the wintertime range of their cars when testing and experience showed the vehicles’ range dropped far faster and steeper than what Tesla claimed in its advertisements.
In Juneau, Alaska, the city’s first electric public bus could not hold a battery charge long enough to finish its route on cold days and required a heated garage.
Winter is tough on any battery, and increased demand for home heating also puts strain on the electric grid.
This is true in the summer as well, as Californians found out from a Flex notification from the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) last summer, covered by Climate Realism here.
Californians were informed that they should not charge their EVs during heat waves, because it will overload the grid as expected air conditioning use rises.
CAISO told utility customers:
“…grid operators again ask the public to conserve electricity to help balance supply and demand on the grid and avoid service disruptions due to extreme heat across much of the Southwest.
Pre-charge electronic devices · Close window coverings to keep your home or apartment cool · Pre-charge electric vehicles”
While some EVs do fine when a home can place the car in a heated garage, or a more expensive model EV with battery-heating technology is used, this won’t work for everyone in places where even gasoline cars can struggle.
Both extreme cold and extreme heat can drain batteries quickly, making locations with extended periods of very cold or hot temperatures less than ideal for EV use.
Long distances between population centers, harsh subzero temperatures, and suboptimal road conditions all make EVs less appealing.
Political mandates that stop the sale of combustion engine vehicles in these parts of the world before EV technologies have improved may not just be inconvenient or expensive but may be deadly.
The Globe and Mail is right to point out these weaknesses in EVs, instead of merely flattering EV manufacturers and virtue signaling for climate alarmists.
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Howdy
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The usual advice is to leave the vehicle connected to the grid, switch on, and let the grid warm it up. That’s a rather silly situation since it’s little different to using a block heater, and costs more out of your pocket, causes delay while negating some of the EV supposed benefits.
Likewise, a heated garage is a ridiculous situation when you use a battery car that is claimed better and cheaper.
If the vehicle won’t even enable, then that points to poor research, or cut cost/not fit for purpose parts. Starting problems for IC engines in exceedingly cold conditions are forgivable, and at least the engine will try, but since EVs are pure electronic, there is no such sympathy. EVs are such a lie.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Howdy and PSI Readers,
Talk is cheap; doing requires effort.
Lewis Agassiz, a naturalist, learned to see and he claimed his greatest achievement was that he taught a few students to also see. But these students came to him because Agassiz had a reputation because of a significant.achievement. What was his significant achievement?
He was a Swiss who lived in the Alps where snow, which fell on the high mountains during the winter, did not regularly melt during the summer. Hence, a thick layer of snow (ice) had built up and the thick layers of ice began to slide down the mountain slopes where these layers of ice (glaciers) did regularly melt at these lower elevations during the summer.
Agassiz, while walking about to observe nature as naturalists do, saw that at the edge of the melting snow the these layers of ice had carried down boulders from the higher elevations. And Agassiz had learned from the geologists that large boulders had been found laying on the earth surfaces where there were no mountains. So he deduced, what the geologist had not, that in previous times there had been glaciers which moved erratic bounders, which these bounder become termed, from where they were formed to where they could not have been formed.
Hence, Agassiz’s achievement was that he convinced the geologists that glaciers had previously covered large northern potions of Europe, Asia, and North America.
Howdy, from what you have written, it’s seems that you do not have the ambition to achieve as Agassiz and his students did. Only you know why this lack of ambition.
Have a good day,
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Howdy
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“doing requires effort.”
Jerry, what would you have me do that would actually achieve anything these days given that the barriers are almost insurmountable and the major requirement means power through monetary influence?
As I have learned through repeated lessons dealt to me, ambition is not what I’m here for. Operative word, “learned”. Meaning I don’t make the same errors that do not serve me. in futility.
I am not Agassiz, nor would I model myself on said person, nor any other. Do you not realize, that as I comment, I am giving information others may find usefull, so am doing as Agassiz would anyway? Other than to ‘big one’s self up’, Isn’t that why we all comment?
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Howdy,
You asked: “Isn’t that why we all comment?” NO! A difference is your last comment contained 7 I’s and mine 0. My comment was to share information about which you, or another reader, might not be aware. My purpose is to cause a reader to PONDER about observed facts and possibly to come up with their own ideas about what these observed facts might mean to their understanding of why or how.
Have a good day
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Howdy
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“You asked: “Isn’t that why we all comment?” NO!”
I believe it is. If it isn’t for spreading knowledge others possibly benefit from, then it’s for self gratification, and I won’t bother with that since PSI has enough of those. That would be the true definition of ‘I’ as used in a selfish manner. Others may still learn something but it is based purely on bolstering of self.
“A difference is your last comment contained 7 I’s and mine 0.”
You’ve got to be kidding. Perhaps i should refer to myself in the third person:
“As the commenter has learned through” blah blah. Would that make me appear selfless? Course not, It just makes things difficult for the reader. Perhaps I should also use “the other commenter” instead of “you”, as well? That has implications of addressing multiple other commenters from a group though.
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Howdy
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Just a small matter, other commenter.
“come up with their own ideas about what these observed facts”
You refer to somebody else, Agassiz in this case, yet shouldn’t you practice what you preach and use your own experience instead of depending on the works and words of others? Just a thought.
Jerry Krause
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Hi Howdy and PSI Readers,
Howdy: “Perhaps i should refer to myself in the third person:” If you read Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences you will find that is what Galileo did.
Have a good day
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Howdy
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If you diverged from your trusted heroes once in a while Jerry, you too would find other people also refer to themselves in the third person. it’s nothing unusual, nor special, and It makes one no more endearing than if they referred to themselves as ‘I’.
Is that why you tried to catch me out on it, because I don’t measure up (in your estimation)? Some things are bigger, and I wouldn’t waste my time on petty nonsense.
Were it that important to you, I would expect you yourself to emulate him and use it first.
JerrY Krause
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Hi PSI Readers and Howdy,
I have no idea where this comment might end up-.
(https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/uscrn/products/hourly02/2023/CRNH0203-2023-OR_Corvallis_10_SSW.txt)
(https://wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/rawMAIN.pl?orOFIN)
At these two links one can review data from the previous hours which has been measured and recorded. These two weather stations set side by side in a remote natural area. One can read about this natural laboratory (https://principia-scientific.com/the-corvallis-or-uscrn-site-a-natural-laboratory-part-two/).
Howdy, you wrote: “If you diverged from your trusted heroes once in a while Jerry, you too would find other people also refer to themselves …”. Data measured and recorded at natural laboratories like these are my “trusted heroes”.
Have a good day
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Howdy
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Agassiz, Galileo, Einstein, and any others you constantly ram down our throats. These are your heroes that are quoted, to the detriment of others.
It’s wise to look up once in a while, or life, and it’s experiences pass you by. There will come a point where there is no more time to look up and so much has been missed. Those times will never come again.
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Dave
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EVs, Unsafe at any Speed
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Lorraine
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Why should anyone be sympathetic toward those who fall for the EV scam?
When there’s insufficient electricity to charge a battery operated vehicle, what then? Where’s the landfill for the spent lithium batteries going to be located?
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K Kaiser
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@ all
What most people don’t recognize is that batteries (of any kind) are chemical systems that, according to to nature’s laws, are highly influenced by temperature. At temperatures below 0 C, the power output of any battery falls rapidly, regardless of its total energy storage capacity.
In colder areas, (like Ottawa, Ontario, often at -30 C in winter), most parking lots have electrical outlets (and the cars have plugs & cables to connect) to warm engine-oil heaters to make sure the cars can start when its cold. Without such external heating, at those cold temperatures, even most engine oils are more like frozen butter and the battery wouldn’t be able to deliver enough “juice” to overcome its stiff resistance.
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Howdy
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Lead acid still retains a lot of power at reduced temperature, If it’s in decent condition it will still do it’s job. Li-ion, not so much.
Looking inside an engine during cold start (-30 degrees)
I’ll still have the ‘old faithfull’.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
There is no such chemical as “lead acid”.
Have a good day
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Howdy
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There is no such chemical as “lead acid”
Nobody claimed there was, and the subject is batteries.
A battery in the vast majority of road vehicles contains lead plates, plus a few chemicals in a paste, with the electrolyte mix consisting of Sulphuric acid and water. Thus, lead acid battery.
You should do some research on battery types Jerry…
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Howdy
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The other guy dropped out as usual, but just for completeness, you will find other additional elements added to the lead structure in order to provide fx strength, lower gassing point, or any other desirable trait.
The acid too, in at least certain Yuasa batteries, contains as I recall, excess acid ions that will prevent cell shorting due to lack of availability of them after extreme over-discharge. I believe it causes ‘treeing’ or ‘mossing’, with either leading to a short cell.
The so-called ‘sealed lead acid’ battery (they’re not) is prone to the problem as it starts it’s life with minimal electrolyte anyway.
Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
I just read (https://wildfiretoday.com/2023/02/24/renewed-call-for-the-holy-grail-of-firefighter-tracking/#comments) some comments made by experienced people involved in fighting Wildfires in the USA forests. I have never fought a Wildfire but my property (two building, pickup, tractor, trailers, etc was burned in a Wildfire. Which I know could likely happen because Wildfire’s have been long been known to start because of natural lighting strikes. And I do not know of many, any, forests with 1000 year old trees when the harvesting of the timber was begun.
And I had seen that if the timber trees were too widely spaced, brush began growing beneath the trees. Hence, I conclude, based upon experience, that natural wildfires cannot be prevented by any forestry practices. Maybe they can be limited in size, but never be prevented, if we are going to have green forests whose timber can be sometimes harvested.
Have a good day
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